The invention relates to a cooker with several electric hotplates, particularly hotplates with a hotplate body having a substantially closed upper cooking surface, which are fitted into a mounting plate. A thermostat is provided for switching each hotplate, being connected to at least one of the leads thereof.
Conventionally, higher power electric hotplate have a thermostat, which is arranged on the hotplate, e.g. below the central area thereof and which responds to hotplate overheating, so that it switches off when inadvertently operated under no-load conditions, but normally also on exceeding a certain operating temperature, or is switched back to a lower power level. Such a thermostat is known from German Pat. No. 1,123,059.
German Pat. No. 2,620,004, corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,330, discloses a thermal cut-out or thermostat, which is arranged therefore outside the space enclosed by the lower hotplate cover, but in which a temperature sensor also projects into said space, in order to be able to sense in an optimum manner the temperature of the hotplate or its heating system. In addition, a safety temperature switch is provided in the switch base and which also substantially responds to the hotplate temperature, in the same way as similar safety temperature switches provided on a connection metal sheet of the hotplate.
These thermostats are intended to detect overheating of the hotplate and to switch off the latter on exceeding a given temperature. As in the construction according to German Pat. No. 1,123,059, part of the power is switched off even when the hotplate is in a conventional temperature range, the residual power being sufficient to carry out normal cooking processes, but is too low to lead to unacceptable overheating.